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Monday 26 December 2005


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IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 300 8-14 October 2005

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENTS:

UGANDA: Army to hunt LRA rebels inside Sudan
UGANDA: WFP appeals for more resources to feed IDPs
BURUNDI: 3,000 Rwandans seek refuge in the north
BURUNDI: Rwasa expelled as FNL leader
DRC: 170,000 get clean drinking water
DRC: Rebels attack villages, kill 24, displace thousands
DRC-TANZANIA: Repatriation of Congolese refugees begins
TANZANIA: Zanzibar police shoot at crowd, 18 wounded
KENYA: UNICEF appeals for funds for children in drought-hit areas
CAR: Mission to flood-affected areas planned, official says
CAR: Repatriation of Sudanese refugees to begin shortly, UNHCR says

UGANDA: Army to hunt LRA rebels inside Sudan

Sudan has authorised the Ugandan army to hunt down the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels wherever they hide in Sudan, an army spokesman said on Tuesday.

Sudan also assured Uganda it and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army would help hunt down the LRA, Ugandan deputy army spokesman Maj Felix Kuraije said.

An agreement to this effect was signed in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on 7 October, he added. Ugandan and Sudanese military officials along with former SPLA rebel fighters would meet in Juba on Wednesday to discuss joint anti-LRA operations.

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UGANDA: WFP appeals for more resources to feed IDPs

At least 1.45 million people displaced by conflict in northern Uganda could experience severe food shortages unless the World Food Programme (WFP) receives fresh donations to sustain its operations in the region beyond December, an official of the UN agency said.

"We spend US $8 million per month to feed more than 1.45 million internally displaced people [IDPs] in northern Uganda," Ken Davies, the WFP country director in Uganda, said on Wednesday.

WFP said in a separate statement that it needed $58 million to buy food locally to feed almost the entire population of northern Uganda, who had been driven out of their homes by frequent attacks by the LRA.

Full report

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BURUNDI: 3,000 Rwandans seek refuge in the north

At least 3,000 Rwandans, who earlier this year sought asylum in Burundi but were repatriated, have returned to the northern provinces of Kirundo and Ngozi where they are awaiting the government's ruling on their status, UNHCR Public Relations Officer Catherine Lune-Grayson said on Wednesday in Bujumbura, the Burundi capital.

An official in charge of refugees in the Ministry of the Interior, Col Didace Nzikoruriho, told IRIN that a team of lawyers, as well as refugee and human rights experts would be recruited to define the status of the Rwandans.

"If we find they are refugees, they will be treated as such, if not, they will be treated accordingly," he added.

Nzikoruriho said the government was preparing a bill on asylum seekers and the protection of refugees. If parliament adopted such a bill, he said, the law would allow the government to set up a permanent secretariat on refugees.

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BURUNDI: Rwasa expelled as FNL leader

Agathon Rwasa, leader of Burundi's remaining rebel group, the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL), has been expelled from the movement's leadership, a new FNL spokesman announced on Tuesday.

The new spokesman, Sylvestre Niyungeko, who replaces Pasteur Habimana, told a local radio that Jean Bosco Sindayigaya had replaced Rwasa as the new FNL leader.

Niyungeko said 29 FNL founding members and 93 other members decided Rwasa's removal at the National Council meeting on 8 October at Muyira, Bujumbura Rural Province. This follows the signing of a letter, by the same group, in September, calling on Rwasa to convene a national congress to determine the movement's direction, given the political changes in the country.

Full report

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DRC: 170,000 get clean drinking water

A French humanitarian aid association, Solidarités, launched on Wednesday a $3-million drinking water distribution network for 170,000 people in the town of Beni, in North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

A Solidarités delegation from Paris, led by General Manager Alain Boinet, handed over the project to local authorities during the ceremony at Beni, a town of some 176,000 people.

Work on the project started in 2003. A team of hydraulic engineers from Solidarités received the support of volunteer experts from Aquassitance, a French NGO specialising in water provision, waste disposal and the environment; and utilised a design office's expertise for the technical conception.

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DRC: Rebels attack villages, kill 24, displace thousands

Thousands of civilians began arriving in the town of Walungu in eastern DRC on Monday following attacks on four nearby villages, in which at least 24 civilians were hacked to death.

"Most of the displaced are small children and old women," Donatien Nakalonge, a local community leader in the town of Walungu in South Kivu Province, told IRIN on Tuesday.

They walked 15 km from their villages of Tchindudi, Mungombe, Kanyola and Rudundu, in a valley 60 km south of the provincial capital, Bukavu.

The spokesman for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Kemal Saiki, said on Monday that a UN team had, so far, visited two of the villages and confirmed that 15 people had been killed, including six children.

Full report

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DRC-TANZANIA: Repatriation of Congolese refugees begins

The repatriation of Congolese refugees who have been living in camps in western Tanzania began on Wednesday with the first batch of 282 leaving for the DRC, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has announced.

It said the returnees were taken to Baraka in the DRC, which is home for most of those in the convoy. UNHCR said a few were from Uvira [South Kivu Province], who will be sent there by bus to their homes.

Tanzanian government officials, UNHCR staff and those from NGOs operating in refugee camps accompanied the Congolese on their return home. UNHCR said the repatriation was for those who had voluntarily opted to go home. Besides the returnees, UNHCR said, there were 15 representatives of the remaining refugees who were going to DRC on what it termed a "go and see" visit.

UNHCR said at least 150,000 Congolese refugees were still in Tanzanian camps and that Wednesday's repatriation was "a test convoy".

Full report

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TANZANIA: Zanzibar police shoot at crowd, 18 wounded

At least 18 supporters of the main opposition party in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar were wounded on Sunday after police opened fire on a crowd.

"I heard the gunshots," said Salma Mohammed, a Zanzibar-based reporter covering the political campaign there ahead of 30 October elections.

She and other witnesses said riot police, known as the Field Force Unit, fired bullets and tear gas canisters into the crowd at the town of Donge 30 km north of Zanzibar's capital, Stone Town.

The confrontation occurred after supporters of the opposition Civic United Front party attempted to hold a campaign rally that authorities had cancelled in the last moment.

Full report

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KENYA: UNICEF appeals for funds for children in drought-hit areas

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has appealed for $4 million to help tens of thousands of children who are either malnourished or at risk of malnutrition in drought-affected districts of Kenya.

Some of the required funds would finance an ongoing polio immunisation campaign made necessary by the recent outbreak of the crippling disease in Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, which border Kenya, Sara Cameron, the UNICEF-Kenya communications officer, said on Wednesday in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

Working with the government and other organisations, UNICEF-supported assessments had shown that at least one-quarter of children in the northeastern district of Mandera, and more than one in every five children in the vast northern district of Turkana, were acutely malnourished.

"We need resources now to provide urgent assistance to 21,000 children facing malnutrition, immunise almost a million vulnerable children against polio and provide water to 100,000 people in critical need," Heimo Laakkonen, UNICEF's country representative in Kenya, said in a statement.

Full report

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CAR: Mission to flood-affected areas planned, official says

The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) may send a mission to flood affected areas outside the capital, Bangui, to assess the agricultural damage caused by floods that swept parts of the country in August, a government official has said.

"We are going to get in touch with the Red Cross to get their report in order to plan a mission into the [affected] zones," M'Peco Etienne, the director of planning in the Ministry of Agriculture, said on Thursday.

He said the government did not have a clear picture of the impact of the floods, especially in the central province of Ouaka, where farms were reported still inundated.

"We don't have the map of high risk zones in the country," he said. "We have no information about farms flooded by rain water in the towns of Bambari, Kouango, Grimari and Bakala as reported by the National Red Cross Committee".

Full report

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CAR: Repatriation of Sudanese refugees to begin shortly, UNHCR says

Tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in CAR will be repatriated towards the end of October or in November, UNHCR Representative Bruno Geddo said on Tuesday.

"There are currently 20,000 Sudanese refugees in the CAR and the UNHCR office is still making the list of those who are willing to go back home," he said at a news conference in the capital, Bangui.

He said the date on which the repatriation would begin depended on the signing of a tripartite agreement by the CAR, Sudan and the UNHCR.

Full report

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[ENDS]

Theme(s)	Other

Other recent CENTRAL & EASTERN AFRICA reports:

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 310 17-23 December 2005, 23/Dec/05

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 309 10-16 December 2005, 16/Dec/05

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 308 3-9 December 2005, 9/Dec/05

UN appeal seeks $154.5 million for recovery efforts , 7/Dec/05

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 307 26 November to 2 December 2005, 2/Dec/05

Other recent reports:

RWANDA: Body found in Brussels canal confirmed that of ex-minister's, 23/Dec/05

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 23/Dec/05

WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 309 covering 17 - 23 December 2005, 23/Dec/05

CENTRAL ASIA: IRIN-Asia Weekly Round-up 51 covering the period 17 - 23 December 2005, 23/Dec/05

SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 262 for 17-23 December 2005, 23/Dec/05

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